Bloody Hell...

Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World

By JOSH GERSTEIN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | April 21, 2008

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing.

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.

“Where’s the rice?” an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. “You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.”

(snip)

“Due to the limited availability of rice, we are limiting rice purchases based on your prior purchasing history,” a sign above the dwindling supply said.

Shoppers said the limits had been in place for a few days, and that rice supplies had been spotty for a few weeks. A store manager referred questions to officials at Costco headquarters near Seattle, who did not return calls or e-mail messages yesterday.

An employee at the Costco store in Queens said there were no restrictions on rice buying, but limits were being imposed on purchases of oil and flour. Internet postings attributed some of the shortage at the retail level to bakery owners who flocked to warehouse stores when the price of flour from commercial suppliers doubled.

The curbs and shortages are being tracked with concern by survivalists who view the phenomenon as a harbinger of more serious trouble to come.

“It’s sporadic. It’s not every store, but it’s becoming more commonplace...”

Read the rest

MOGS Mode Engaged.

You know, there's days when I have to look around me and wonder. As hokey and corny as this may sound, there's times when I look around this country and find parts of it are difficult to recognize. The historian in me is what usually keeps any alarmism in check, because well, shortages have happened, and likely will continue to happen as long as there's a human race walking the planet Earth. That's not what worries me. What worries me is the nagging feeling that everything I've sworn to protect for my entire adult life now is going to start slipping away all around me (and for any lefty trolls who happen to be reading this, please take any discussions of "Itz all Booooosh's faultz! elsewhere, you're barking up the wrong tree around these parts, you know what, I have a delete button on comments and I make you NO promise about not using it).

I actually tend to think, again as an aspiring historian only, that history is going to vindicate W to a large degree...in about 20-30 years of course, assuming that there's a United States left that cares by then. I look at in the same vein as how it's taken Harry Truman a long time to earn the respect he deserves, and similarly, for Woodrow Wilson and FDR to get a second, more critical look than the bona-fide "byes" they seemed to have earned previously. If only people would get their head screwed on straight about Kennedy too, but I digress).

I mean this is America right? We're not supposed to have food shortages. I found myself talking to some grad students the other day. They kinda of scared me. They seemed to possess the belief that no one was entitled to self-defense (this was a discussion about the Virginia Tech incident - let's save this for another day, it's not my focus here), the idea of "personal responsibility" seemed rather alien.

I told them point blank that I actually thought that people were far, far, far more capable and smart than they gave credit it for. The looks of incredulity I received, just the blank eyes and metrosexual beta-male pouts that ensued was enough to make me smirk and walk off. They're going to Princeton or something.

It's sad to me. Of course "everybody has their opinion" and "you're not always right MOGS," I get that. "Not everyone can be you." Yeah, I've heard that too, and as much I as don't like it, I am not a completely independent self-sufficient mammal myself. No one is. But the idea of just lying there like a sheep, believing that you're not even entitled to raise an arm to protect you own self...

The idea was so alien to them......I felt as if I was talking to H.G. Well's ELOI. And the odd thing is, Wells was one of the far left's patron saints for a long time. He even coined the phrase "liberal fascism" and he didn't mean it in a condescending or negative way.

I tend to call these folks "the first to be eaten" re: chew toys for Morlocks, zombies, Posleen, xenomorphs, Cylons, Terminators, CHUD, or any other such as far as we know fictional grab-apple that happens to look at Planet Earth and see a nice, fat, ripe snack. I also tend to think this is why, to some of us mid-level geeks, why arch nerd-fests such as WH40K appeal so dang much (no I don't have any models or such, but I do enjoy the Dawn of War series of games and have found the novels by Dan Abnett quite entertaining - the man knows his military history and employs it great effect).

Me own sainted mother thinks, that creepiness aside, the idea of CPS sweeping into people's homes and property is completely justified and okay if its all for "the children" and when I have kids someday I'd "understand that." I kinda hope I don't ever come to understand that. I would hope to god I would raise my kids, starting with any help I can give to my godson, to be better than this. I also tend to think that this divide in opinion is why God made both men and women.

Not surprisingly, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, etc tend to be....interesting around La Casa della MOGSY.

Oops, I let out a secret. Yup, I MOGSY am not-so-secretly an elitist. I do happen to think that some people are better than others. It's based solely on character. It's based solely on actions, not words even. Words are easy. Even typing here is easy. Actions, now those are tough. "Character is what you are in the dark" an obscure movie character once said. Character is destiny has been the mantra of (old school) philosophy, religion, and psychology. Of course, us moderns are far too good and sophisticated for something as bourgeoise and patriarchal as "character" now aren't we?

It's weird being really young and feeling really, really old at the same time. It's not new, my sister has called me "old man" since we were kids and she's only about 3.5 years my junior. One of her best friends, about the same age has always called me "Uncle Chris" as something of a affectionate putdown. My dad swears up and down I act and think older than him. One of my airmen in Korea told me that I had "an old soul." I don't know where it came from. At age 12 we just starting to notice girls (yes once upon a time they didn't teach sex-ed at 8 and it wasn't THAT long ago), but I also noticed the Berlin Wall fell and that was important, and that some Mid-Eastern nut-job named Saddam Hussein invaded some tiny-ass little country that precocious me had never heard of, and that was also important.

Alkaline Trio have a song where they sing "At when you're only 23 it's not attractive to complain about your sore back." :)

I'm not 23.

I'm a (wannabe) historian for God's sake, who doesn't buy into post-modernism and who despises the "Rape of the Masters" that's had to take place in order to even remotely consider that stupid little ..... from Yale an "artist." And, I really don't care about her right to expression. That's fine, she has every to earn the disdain and outrage of most of the country minus the dimwits whose actually life experience counts for so very little that they could even begin to find her horrid act as any form of "art." My only hope for her is that she earns the full measure of "what goes around, comes around some day," and I've wished that sort of thing on very, very few people.

I've said it many times in the past, but I happen to think Marxism is the greatest line of wishful-thinking ever swallowed by any sizable group of people, it's led thus far to nothing except pain, suffering, tyranny, and the very destruction of the people its supposed to prop up. It's right next to the idea that "one set of values is a good as any other." Really. So, how's that panned out?

There's a lot of things I see that I don't like. Some I can do something about, most I can't. What I don't want to see is my own home changed so irrevocably, given over to the soft tyrannies that I think have already marred one generation too many, (though I think, thank God, Gen-X is starting to wake up and realize that it can't continue to sulk, sit in the corner and listen to Nirvana while the world passes it by).

What can I say? In the last couple years I've gone almost to the right side of Attila the Hun, but I for one think that on principal, libertarian or Jeffersonian views about personal responsibility and minding one's own business first are good things. I realize that I would rather have a country that allows me the freedom of choice to be conservative than mandates it. I also want freedom from a country that robs me blind to "bring about 'social justice' instead of allowing me to be a good human being and contribute to the betterment of my fellow citizens of my own free will. I'm for living in a country which practices the basic mindset of "you break it, you buy it."

I'm tired of "causes," I'm frickin' sick and tired of "awareness" - I think I'm plenty damned aware of everything under the sun now, thanks to all the Yellow-ribbon RIPOFFS out there now for every blessed thing under the sun. I'm tired of being asked to accept that feral kids beating each other up and posting it on YouTube is somehow "normal."

I wonder when the Jon Galt scenario starts to take effect? I've heard many a (resourceful, hard-working soul with means) say "screw 'em, if they keep taxing me to death and punishing me for being smart and successful, I'm just gonna quit."

Alarmist? Chicken-little? You know what? Dear God I hope so. I would rather be a complete cynic who's proven utterly wrong than a Candide` walking around with my head in the clouds and have the rug pulled out completely from under me.

It's just getting scary from atop the rampart. It seems like something's brewing over in the Old Quarter, and I just don't like it, and the men are whispering rumors, centurion.

Comments

[antitool]

Wow. The country is going soft. Not that I haven't said this before.

Morlock Zero-Six, out.